July, 2013

This is one of many great recipes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Appetite for Reduction: 125 Fast and Filling Low-Fat Vegan Recipes. For some silly reason, I’d only made this once before (in my pre-blog days). Other than the time it takes to wash and chop the vegetables, it cooks up really quickly, makes a lot of food, and is so tasty.

I followed her directions pretty closely. My changes: skimped on the carrots, skipped the agave nectar, and added browned tempeh for some protein.

I’m trying desperately to keep up with the South Beach Diet but, as you may have noticed, I really love pizza. I tried making a cauliflower crust pizza once before. I’m into the spirit of the cauliflower crust but it did not work out for me at all. It fell apart and was mushy and grainy and created a million dishes and was just sad all around. I came across this recipe for zucchini crust pizza at my favorite South Beach Diet-friendly blog, Kalyn’s Kitchen. The main ingredient is obviously zucchini. There’s some oregano, garlic powder, salt, and shredded mozzarella and parmesan cheeses in there. The ingredients that hold everything together though were problematic for me and I feared a repeat of the cauliflower disaster. It calls for almond meal (instead of flour, sticking to the no grains rule) and a beaten egg. I’m very allergic to almond meal but I figured a nut is a nut so I made my own cashew meal by pulverizing a handful of raw cashews in my food processor. I don’t buy eggs so I improvised with a flax egg instead. And would you believe it…it worked out! It stayed together and was a real crust! And it tasted great!

Right out of the oven

I topped with garlicky tomato sauce, shredded mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, spinach, and artichoke hearts. I ate pizza and my diet is intact! At least until tomorrow when we go to dinner at our favorite vegan restaurant, Ethos. Oh, well.

I like her way of cooking the tofu. I’ve made a million stir fries with tofu over the years but I always cook the tofu in Smart Balance oil in a pan. Her instructions allow you to cook the tofu without any oil by baking it on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet. The parchment paper means you don’t have to clean another pan – extra bonus! We are not mushroom fans so I used two small yellow squash and a zucchini instead. I also substituted spinach for the kale. It’s a keeper!

I used a can of El Ebro brand black beans instead of pinto beans and I’ve never seen white balsamic vinegar so I used regular balsamic vinegar. I was also a bit short on the cilantro because I can’t stand when people leave the stems in but I was hungry and tired of meticulously picking each individual cilantro leaf off of the stems so I stopped before I got the full 1/2 cup.

This salad is excellent. We ate the entire thing. I don’t feel that bad about it either because it’s quite a healthy salad.

Robbie got me an electric fondue set for my first Mother’s Day! Dog mamas count too, y’all. I’ve been making cheese fondue for years on the stovetop because all the fondue sets I’d ever seen came with the goofy candle situation that never burns quite hot enough to keep the cheese melted. No more eating in front of the stove! Electric fondue set has us moving on up.

Happy Independence Day, fellow ‘muricans! I’m really into Christmas fabrics right now. I think because I realize I’m very slow at sewing and quilting so if I want finished items in time for Christmas I had better get on it in July.

I got a beautiful layer cake of Aneela Hoey’s “Cherry Christmas” line. It’s just so precious! I cut two of the 10″ layer cake pieces into 8 total 5″ pieces and paired that with charm squares of Bella Snow to make half square triangles. I used the two at a time method.

Half Square Triangle Work Station

Stacks of squared up (down?) HSTs and 4 charm squares – each are now 4.25″ square

There are so many things you can do with HSTs. I have a feeling zig zags and windmills are in my near future but I want to make this star first. Here it is all laid out. I just have to sew it together – the scary part. I have my quarter inch foot on my machine now so hopefully things will line up better this time. Once I have the star finished and can behold it in its final size I’ll decide if it should become a pillow, table runner, or placemat.

It is so hot here! Time for slow cooking and avoiding the oven. I found this list of vegetarian crockpot recipes in a post on Reddit. I decided to modify this Vegetarian Crockpot Curry Recipe to enjoy last night. The complete recipe with my changes is below. I went overboard with the chopped tomatoes. I think mostly because of that this dish wasn’t much of a curry, per se. We both still liked it. I used the whole box of Pomi Chopped Tomatoes but I will definitely reduce that to three quarters of the box or less in the future.